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JohnnyWalker · 14 June 2005, 17:03

Reading the other thread that lists all those hidden messages left for would-be crackers by game programmers, I noticed a lot of them making bold statements about the crackability of their games and it made me wonder if there was ever a programmer or game that did a REALLY good job of protecting their software?

It's funny because I remember Ocean, Robocop 3 and the 'dongle' affair. Anyone else remember this? Leading up to the release there were loads of game magazine features about the state of piracy on the Amiga. Ocean were making bolds claims; they'd developed a way to make games uncrackable... each copy of their new games would come with a hardware dongle, designed to be plugged into the spare mouse port when playing the game. Since it would be impossible for cracking groups to replace this vital peice of hardware, the games would be uncrackable!

Of course, I heard a few hours after the release of Robocop 3 the game had been cracked, which at the time made me wonder if the whole thing hadn't been a stunt to boost pre-order sales!

(Slightly OT: Another little "piracy" anecdote for those who can remember: Do you remember the industry quotes leading up to the release of the CD32? You see; CD's were uncopyable, yet they were just as cheap as floppy disks to produce. So, the magazines asked, "with there being NO piracy possible on your new CD games, and the games themselves costing no more to produce (most of the time they were little more than the A1200 version put onto a CD), does that mean the consumer can enjoy lower prices?". "Why of course it does! Piracy takes such a huge chunk of our revenue that we can now offer lower prices to the consumer like we've always promised!"

A few months later... The new CD32 games were priced £10 higher than their floppy versions! A classic story to remember the next time some industry bod claims that piracy makes game prices higher!)

Anyways; uncrackable / very difficult to crack games... where there any?

14 June 2005, 17:03	#1
JohnnyWalker aka ThunderPeel2001 Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: UK Age: 45 Posts: 303	Games that were tough to crack... Reading the other thread that lists all those hidden messages left for would-be crackers by game programmers, I noticed a lot of them making bold statements about the crackability of their games and it made me wonder if there was ever a programmer or game that did a REALLY good job of protecting their software? It's funny because I remember Ocean, Robocop 3 and the 'dongle' affair. Anyone else remember this? Leading up to the release there were loads of game magazine features about the state of piracy on the Amiga. Ocean were making bolds claims; they'd developed a way to make games uncrackable... each copy of their new games would come with a hardware dongle, designed to be plugged into the spare mouse port when playing the game. Since it would be impossible for cracking groups to replace this vital peice of hardware, the games would be uncrackable! Of course, I heard a few hours after the release of Robocop 3 the game had been cracked, which at the time made me wonder if the whole thing hadn't been a stunt to boost pre-order sales! (Slightly OT: Another little "piracy" anecdote for those who can remember: Do you remember the industry quotes leading up to the release of the CD32? You see; CD's were uncopyable, yet they were just as cheap as floppy disks to produce. So, the magazines asked, "with there being NO piracy possible on your new CD games, and the games themselves costing no more to produce (most of the time they were little more than the A1200 version put onto a CD), does that mean the consumer can enjoy lower prices?". "Why of course it does! Piracy takes such a huge chunk of our revenue that we can now offer lower prices to the consumer like we've always promised!" A few months later... The new CD32 games were priced £10 higher than their floppy versions! A classic story to remember the next time some industry bod claims that piracy makes game prices higher!) Anyways; uncrackable / very difficult to crack games... where there any?